


And your eyes look like coming home (All I know is a simple name)

by hannahhoppers



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, this one's kinda strange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 13:50:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7465815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannahhoppers/pseuds/hannahhoppers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She changed her name when she turned eighteen, giving up two names, each from a set of parents who abandoned her. With him, she changes it one last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And your eyes look like coming home (All I know is a simple name)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Everything has Changed by Taylor Swift.
> 
> I don't own the show or the characters, so I'm playing with them. Adam and Eddy have such nice toys. Unbeta'd. Kudos and comments if you enjoy!

            On her eighteenth birthday, she had her name legally changed. For a decade, her name was Drew Nesbitt. 

 

            Emma Swan held too many bad memories for her. Emma was the name given to her by her birth parents, who hadn’t even bothered to drop her off at a hospital. Swan was the name given to her by the family she could have had, but didn’t. 

 

            Emma Swan was the little girl who bounced from foster home to foster home. _Little Orphan Emma_ , they had taunted. Nobody ever really seemed to notice when the little blonde girl with sad green eyes disappeared from the class. 

 

            Emma Swan was the stupid girl who had let Neal waltz through her walls. She had built a door just for him- sculpting it with her hands, putting love into each inch of the gaping hole she created in her defenses, begging him to come in. And what happened? He broke her heart. 

 

            Emma Swan was the juvenile delinquent who had nothing to her name except an unwanted baby bump and a set of car keys. The one the other girls had taunted for not keeping her legs shut. She was the broken one who didn’t want this life (but who would?)

 

            So she spent hours in the prison library, poring over baby name books. Everybody thought she was picking out something for the little thing growing inside of her, but they were wrong. She was choosing something for herself. A new title, a new label. Once she got out of these grey walls, the orange jumpsuit discarded, she’d start over. New name, new city, new job. New life. Drew meant strong. That was what she needed most, she thought. To be strong. As she walked up the courthouse steps, she realized she didn’t have a last name picked out. While filling out papers, she thought back, wracking her brain for the name of the nurse whose hand she’d squeezed as she was forcing out her son. _Nesbitt_.

 

            Drew Nesbitt was a bailbondsperson from Boston. She drove a beat-up old VW bug and lived in an apartment of her own in a decent part of the city. She had no family and was kind of a loner, but that was alright. She got on okay with her boss and that was what mattered. She hadn’t had a serious relationship in quite a while, but every so often she’d bring home somebody for a one night stand. She said hello to the elderly man in the apartment across from her if they took out the trash at the same time. If there was a problem, she’d dismantle a toaster. There was a row of uncomfortable dresses and prissy heels in her closet that she kept exclusively for her job- otherwise, she wore a red leather jacket and a necklace to remind her not to trust. That was who she was. Drew Nesbitt. 

 

            So imagine her shock, when a brown haired boy with his father’s eyes showed up on her doorstep, asking for her by her old name. She drove him back home, let the people in this quiet little town call her Emma Swan. It was almost familiar, almost welcome. Like running into a highschool acquaintance you hadn’t heard about in a while. She expected the uptake of her old moniker to be just as brief as such an encounter. No such luck. 

 

            In a few months, Drew Nesbitt had disappeared, replaced by Emma Swan. She still wore a tight, red piece of armor and a necklace with a swan imprint. She still had unruly blonde curls and perpetually lonely eyes. Still had tall walls. But it was difficult, nowadays, telling people her name. Choosing an identity to share with each new person. And she wanted to keep her walls high, wanted to be the cool, moderately happy individual she had become over the past ten years. But when some sort of wave had ripped through the air around her, and her parents were enfolding her in their arms and crying her name, she couldn’t bring herself to correct them. 

 

            When she told her name to the leather-clad man with a prickly chin and vibrant eyes, she told him that they called her Drew. When she confessed to her other title, he gave her a funny smile and asked, 

 

“Which do you prefer?”

 

            And she told him. At the top of the beanstalk, when he was chained to a wall, he called the word Nesbitt. Over and over, until his voice went raw. But the final scream she heard was _Emma Swan_. 

 

            When he locked her in a cage, he called her Swan. When she offered him a place in their ranks, a chance to become one of them with ease, he called her Emma. When they were sailing to Neverland, he called her Nesbitt. When he nearly died, still coughing up water but fearing for her because she’d given up her powers, he called her Drew. Because that’s what she told him she preferred. 

 

            And after she’d rescued him from the underworld, and they’d made the foreboding hideaway of the dark one into their home, they sat on the couch and he asked her a question.

 

“What would you think of changing your name again, love?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“What would you say about dropping the Swan, or the Nesbitt?”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

“Would you become Drew Jones?”

 

“Yes.”

 

            And when they told her parents and she saw the joy overtake them, she announced with a shaky breath that she couldn’t be Drew Jones. There was a faltering, fearful look spread between the other three. 

 

“I’m going to be Emma Jones.”

**Author's Note:**

> Idk. I'm not super happy with this one, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head and I thought somebody might enjoy it.


End file.
